PARIS -- Madison Keys hasn't dropped a set in this French Open, partly because she hasn't lost her cool when opportunities slip through her strings. She is playing with aplomb rather than angst on a surface she used to consider foreign soil in every way, regarding it instead as fertile ground.
From the stands inside Suzanne-Lenglen stadium, Lindsay Davenport didn't try to contain her elation Tuesday as Keys cranked a 109-mph serve on match point that pulled her quarterfinal opponent Yulia Putintseva wide in a lunging, futile effort to return. It wasn't just the execution -- it was Keys not second-guessing herself and having conviction in the moment.
"I have told her so many times, 'when you are up, go for it,'" said Davenport, the Tennis Channel analyst and three-time Grand Slam event winner who is in her second stint coaching Keys. She'll relinquish that title of head coach soon, she confirmed, but with the knowledge that Keys is perfectly capable of creating her own teaching moments now.
"I'm happiest with how she handled the tough times today," Davenport said. "It was much heavier [conditions], wasn't as easy end-to-end points, and a lot of pressure when you are all of a sudden a big favorite."
All the correct calculations the 13th-seeded Keys has made in the last five matches have led her to Thursday's Roland Garros semifinals against Sloane Stephens. It is the first time two American women have gone this deep here in 16 years, and the first time the two close friends have met on the court since the 2017 US Open final, won by Stephens. An elapsed time of nine months that Keys said feels "more like 12 years" -- the natural observation of a player in the midst of a visible growth spurt.
Keys' power and versatility on the court give her the tools to be aggressive, but she hasn't always been able to wield them with confidence, especially when she sees chances trickle away. Breaking that habit has been part of a larger maturing process that boils down to this: be your own boss.
"I used to go into situations and just kind of wait for people to tell me what to do and what the plan was and all of that,'' Keys said.
"I have actually been told quite often that I'll never win or do well because I'm too nice of a person and I just don't have it. I think that's a load of crap, but, you know, it's just me. I don't think you have to be mean in order to win matches. I think there's a difference between being intense and wanting it and fighting and just not being nice, so that's something that I have always stayed true to."
She said it with a smile that had a steely quality to it, carried over from her high-quality match with the unseeded Putintseva.
Down 5-3 in the first set, Keys scrapped her way back and earned two set points on Putintseva's serve. A ticked net cord helped thwart her on the first, and the second slipped away on a forehand error after a lengthy rally. Yet even when she fell behind 0-2 in the tiebreak, Keys' expression remained stoic.
Putintseva, prone to on-court outbursts and animated critiques of chair umpires, largely reserved her energy for her tenacious all-court game. The Russian-born, Florida-based Kazakh player took exception to just one service call and smiled warmly at Keys when they shook hands over the net. "She played great,'' Putintseva said. "I played good, too, just the matter of a couple of points that didn't go my way today and went in her way. And in the second set was the same. Just one good shot from her here and one bad shot from me there, and then the set was over.
"I think if she plays, keep on playing like that, she can go all the way here.''
That would have seemed like a somewhat remote possibility 10 days ago when Keys arrived without having yet made the quarterfinals here. At stake Thursday will be not only a shot at a second major final for both Keys and Stephens, but the distinction of leaving Paris as the top-ranked American. And Stephens, with an unblemished 6-0 record in tournament finals, obviously gets tougher to beat the deeper she goes.
It's an interesting scenario to load onto a friendship, but neither woman seemed fussed about that. Far from tiptoeing around each other in the locker room -- "that would just be weird and awkward,'' Keys said -- Stephens said she sought out Keys on Tuesday to tell her a bit of undisclosed "juicy stuff.''
"We don't really have boundaries,'' Keys said. "I don't think that's going to change.''
Except that what happens outside the rectangle stays outside the rectangle. And what happens inside those lines on Thursday, between two players feeling ever more grounded on clay, promises to be fascinating.